Painting Weekend!

Hey everybody!
Well it’s been a very exciting weekend for me, as I’ve been painting a whole load of miniatures with something close to abandon! I’ve not painted so much for a long time, and it feels great!

First of all, at the back end of last week I had hoped to get a game of 40k in at the local store, with a guy who I know has about 2k points of Deathwatch. So I’d been looking at my Dark Eldar army, which I know is well over 2k, and trying to organise myself into the usual double-battalion of Kabal and Coven. In turn, that got me looking at the box of Dark Eldar that I’ve had primed/partially painted, and pulled out a few bits to start working on. One of which, as it happens, is the glorious Razorwing Jetfighter!

I think this has been built for well over a year now, and has just been gathering dust while primed with Rhinox Hide and ready. Over the course of the weekend, I’ve managed to get the brown armour highlighted, and just need to paint the metallics on the wings to give it that razor-edged look. I’m really pleased to have it in the army, anyway, and I’m already looking forward to when I can get in a game and see how well it does!

I’ve also been working on some Court of the Archon minis – the Ur-ghul and the Medusae, both finecast minis that I’d put together a while back but hadn’t really done a great deal with. I already have a Lhamaean, and have used her a couple of times (though never managed to do anything with her, I think I’m a bit scared about getting my HQs too close into combat, though my Archon has once used a Huskblade to destroy an Ork Boss. Anyway!) I like the idea of having a Court in a Venom and just throwing it at the enemy, and seeing how well they do… Last up, then, I’ll need to get that Sslyth sorted!

I’ve not painted any Drukhari for what feels like an age – I last finished some models for the army in February – though I have got a second Ravager almost finished. I think it was probably the fact I only have one crew member left for the Ravager that prompted me to get some of these models out and start painting them again, actually.

I’ve only ever painted three Reaver jetbikes for the army, but have an absolute ton of them built from last winter, when I wanted to get moving with a Wych Cult force. I’ve used the bikes once or twice in games, and I seem to remember they did really well, so it makes sense to try some more! However, in keeping with the lore, I like the idea of having mine as small tripartite gangs of bikers joining the raiding party for a lark, and so wanted the chassis to be different colours to denote this. Having tried to get red last time, this time I thought I’d go for yellow, as it’s a colour I tend not to bother with (aside from the warheads on my smart missile systems!) So far, I think they’ve turned out really well, anyway!

The last Reavers, I managed to paint in a single session. This time around, however, I evidently have more going on, and so they’re still waiting for a few details to be finished…

It’s a bit of an odd one, given I’ve been painting so much Dark Eldar, but I suppose the return of my Dark Eldar has got me thinking about even older armies, and the Necrons are a force that takes me right back to the very start of my 40k life.

I built this Night Scythe in 2015, and managed to get some of it painted in that time, but I think it was possibly the biggest model I’d painted up to that point (it was certainly the one with the most flat areas), and I was a little nervy about getting it to look good. I was also hopeless at working out a scheme for my Necron vehicles that wasn’t just basically Caliban Green, so it was consigned to oblivion all these years.

Well, last night I had trouble sleeping so, in between painting more on the Reavers, I went through my bag of unfinished Necron models to see what I had. (Yes, they were in a bag – the shame!) In addition to finding the Doomsday Ark I had built, I’ve also got an Annihilation Barge and at least one Tomb Blade that I think I can salvage for the Great Reanimation, but everything else I think will likely need to be stripped before I can go about getting it painted in my new Thokt dynasty colours. If indeed I can be bothered to do that – I’ve often been thinking it might be easier to just sell them off and then start afresh, but I’ve so far only sold off the character models that I’d painted (badly!)

All of this stuff seems to date from 2015, which is quite shocking really. I know one of the things that always keeps me going with Necrons is the idea of the implacable tide of infantry, I thought I’d done more of the war machines than this! It’s definitely time to change that, though I’m still really finding it difficult to come up with a Codex list that I actually like the look of, so I’m not yet sure how I want to play my Newcrons in 8th edition.

I came up with the above back in March when the Codex was fresh, but that is a hell of a lot of infantry, with just the Command Barge as a big thing. It’s definitely time to do more with the Necrons than just Immortals and Lychguard, but the cost of these units is kinda prohibitive, and seems to lend itself much better to large-point games. Having the flyer will, I think, be a huge thing for my force, as it acts as a transport as well, though obviously I wouldn’t want to go filling it to capacity as the way the rules work for the Night Scythe mean that any models that haven’t entered play when the Scythe is destroyed are also destroyed. But I think it could be a very useful delivery system for Lychguard while the Immortals hang back as a bit of a gun-line.

Anyway, I’m rambling a bit here!

So I need to get my act together and write up a Necrons list that I actually like the look of; I’ve got a Drukhari list that I do like the look of, so just need to finish off the couple of models that aren’t yet fully painted so that I can actually field it, and then I should be good to go!

Honestly, I’ve never been as excited for the hobby as I am right now!!